Thursday, May 05, 2005

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

WHY THIS WAR NEEDS TO BE FOUGHT.

From summer 2003 to late fall 2004 the scumbags mostly attacked US military personnel. Ever heard about CEV's? That stands for Combat Effectiveness Value. Losing 30-50 of their own for every US soldier KIA, by late fall even the dumbest jihadists had found out that their CEV was somewhat less than that of the average US infantry troop.

Thus, from late fall 2004 they shifted their attention to Iraq's newborn security personnel: Iraqi Police, Iraqi National Guard, NIA (New Iraqi Army). While they were quite successful blowing up raw would be recruits standing in a row sittingducklike and cutting off the heads of unarmed soldiers returning from furlough, by March 2005 it had become clear they could not fool the Iraqi forces forever.

Ergo, they once again had to go look for an adversary they could cope with. As most of you know by now, given the recent spate of terror attacks against unarmed civilians, it looks they have finally found their match:

Picture released by the U.S. Army Tuesday, May 3, 2005 shows a U.S. Army soldier comforting a child fatally wounded in a car bomb blast in Mosul, 360 km (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, May 2, 2005. 15 Iraqis were wounded in the combined suicide bomb attack. (AP Photo/U.S. Army)

I must admit that the past few months - say, from February on - I felt rather disappointed in the lack of a clear signal emerging from the Muslim world that there is an understanding that Americas actions in the GWOT are not meant to undermine Islam, but rather to spur it into re-evaluating and re-explaining its core beliefs and adapting them to modern times. Unshackling the Islamic Faith from the burden of fourteen centuries of rigid interpretations of Quran and Hadith.

Then just recently, I stumbled upon this. Can I - we - have some hope please?

The Muslim world is changing. Three years after the atrocity of 9/11, it may be in the early stages of a reformation, albeit with a small "r". From Morocco to Indonesia, people are trying to develop a more contemporary and humane interpretation of Islam, and some countries are undergoing major transformations.Much of the attention is focused on reformulating the sharia, the centuries-old body of Islamic law deeply embedded in a medieval psychology. The sharia is state law in many Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and the Sudan. For many conservative and radical Muslims, the sharia is Islam: it cannot be changed, and must be imposed in exactly the shape it was first formulated in the ninth century.

Since 9/11, there has been a seismic shift in this perception. More and more Muslims now perceive Islamic law to be dangerously obsolete. And these include the ulema, the religious scholars and clerics, who have a tremendous hold on the minds of the Muslim masses.

The article points to numerous examples, including recent revisions in family law in Morocco, where women are now given equal rights in marriage and custody law, in India, and in Malaysia. Most importantly, where such changes are taking place, they are supported by the religious leaders who have justified the changes by reference to the Quran and to Islamic tradition...

Elsewhere, the focus is not so much on Islamic law as on Islam as a whole. In a general election last March, the Malaysian prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, argued that Islam was almost totally associated with violence and extremism and needed to be formulated anew. He called his new concept "Islam Hadhari", or progressive Islam. It was pitted against the "conservative Islam" of the main opposition party, the Islamic Pas. For the first time, the governing coalition won more than 90 per cent of federal parliamentary seats. Pas, and its version of Islam (full implementation of the sharia, without modification; a leading role in the state for religious scholars; and so on), were routed.

Prime Minister Badawi is, it looks, a welcome change compared to his successor, the fanatic Dr. Mahathir, who quit office with a notorious speech chastizing the jews and lamenting the fact that the Islamic people not so much fail to produce their own consumer goods, but rather their own weapons. Listening to Mr. Badawi, I sincerely hope Mahathir may soon become a ghost from the past. The article concludes with:

Muslims worldwide are acknowledging the need for fundamental change in their perception of Islam. They are making conscious efforts to move away from medieval notions of Islamic law and to implement the vision of justice, equality and beauty that is rooted in the Koran. If such changes continue, the future will not repeat the recent past.

If you are a bit suspicious as to the origins of said article, you may want to read Stephen Schwartz, whom some of us know via Tech Central Station, since he seems to echo the abovementioned viewpoint in this article over at Frontpage Magazine:

...Unlike the radical Islamists of the "Wahhabi lobby," represented by such aggressive and militant groups as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada, and others, we do not fantasize an Islamic conquest of America; nor do we preach the supremacy of Islam. We call for nothing more than a place at the big table of American religions. We do not demand control of the whole table, or a table of our own, separate from other Americans. We welcome sincere interfaith cooperation with Jews, Christians, and others, whom we believe share in the grace of almighty Allah. We affirm, in the words of Qur'an 2:62, "Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans -- whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right -- shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing to fear or to regret."

I hope they are right. Boy, do I hope so. In the meantime, KUDOS for the US Soldier, for it is him who stirred the hornet's nest - it is him, or her, who brought about the so necessary change in the Middle East.

MFBB

UPDATE:

It appears the man who took this photo is a freelance writer by the name of Michael Yon, who is embedded with a Mosul-based Stryker brigade. I got this info via Cdr. Salamander. The terrorist actually DROVE THROUGH A BUNCH OF PLAYING CHILDREN TO GET TO A STRYKER COLUMN!!! One of the victims was this little girl, who died at a US Army hospital. The soldier holding her is actually Major Mark Bieger, a 35-year old West Point graduate and father of three.

Major Mark Bieger found this little girl after the car bomb that attacked our guys while kids were crowding around. The soldiers here have been angry and sad for two days. They are angry because the terrorists could just as easily have waited a block or two and attacked the patrol away from the kids. Instead, the suicide bomber drove his car and hit the Stryker when about twenty children were jumping up and down and waving at the soldiers. Major Bieger, I had seen him help rescue some of our guys a week earlier during another big attack, took some of our soldiers and rushed this little girl to our hospital. He wanted her to have American surgeons and not to go to the Iraqi hospital. She didn't make it. I snapped this picture when Major Bieger ran to take her away. He kept stopping to talk with her and hug her.

Meanwhile, moonbats in Europe and elsewhere are chanting "Victory to the Iraqi Resistance":

I don't care if you are Buddhist, Jew, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, animist or whatever. I'm asking you to pray for this little girl and her friends who died because of a specimen I don't even want to call a swine for fear of insulting swines. If you are an atheist or agnost, ponder for a moment the terrible fate of this child and the agony of her parents. Let us all think if we can't do a little of our own to help Iraq achieve its goal of becomeing a free and prosperous nation where children can grow up peacefully.